


The Other Side

by ofhauntings



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Cuddles, F/M, Mild Language, Mostly Fluff, The Creeping Shadow Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 06:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8786551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofhauntings/pseuds/ofhauntings
Summary: Lockwood and Lucy find themselves suffering from the same chronic nightmare, so Lockwood has an idea to make them both feel a little better. (spoiler alert: it's cuddles)





	

There was no light, but it wasn’t dark. Something was illuminating the forest around him, basking everything in a bitter cold, grey-ish blue light. Ghost fog, he realized, but this was thicker than any other he’d seen and it seemed to steal the color from the trees. Lockwood looked down at his hands. They were still pink and his coat was still black, but he was paler than usual. A heavy weight pressed on his chest and he felt like the cold air was siphoning the color from his skin. A wave of incredible miasma washed over him, making him stumble back with the force of it and feel as though he was sinking into a puddle of quicksand, physically and mentally.

Frost licked at his boots and up his arms, his fingertips turning the same shade of blue as everything else. A powerful wind smacked him in the face, blowing his coat all the way off his arms and leaving him exposed, like he was a child who’d gotten his security blanket taken away. Panic suddenly took over his body, his heart racing as the cold began wrapping its claws around his heart. He felt like icicles were shooting through his arms and chest. They left blue-purple bruises he knew were ghost-touch, and he could feel them spreading across his skin and permeating all the way to his aching bones. In vain his struggled against it, ripping his boots out of the sinking earth only to put it back down and have it sink again.

Lockwood’s thoughts shifted as his struggling became more and more fruitless. He thought about his mother and father, getting too involved in their research and too involved in the Society to realize that they were leaving their children behind. He thought about his sister, who had died in his own house on his own watch while he was in the garden climbing trees. He thought about how his name was cursed with recklessness and how he’d inevitably die just like everyone else… He found his legs had sunk past his ankles into the dirt.

There was nothing he could do, and a part of him wondered if he even should do anything. He was sinking, dying… what use was there fighting the inevitable--

Lucy. Where was Lucy?

She should be right here, right next to him. In the-- where was the Spirit Cape? She was dying like him, he could feel it. Adrenaline began coursing through his veins again.

“Lucy!” He called, wrenching himself out of the grip of the malaise and running aimlessly through the woods. His boots still squished in the quicksand floor, but as long as he kept moving… “Lucy!”

Everything looked the same. The same knotted tree had passed him by at least a hundred times. He was trying to run, trying to yell louder, straining to hear a response, but his muscles felt like he’d been running through water for hours and his throat was so hoarse it cracked.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Lockwood used the last of his energy to make one last sprint toward Lucy--

 

\-- and bolted upright, breathing heavily with freezing sweat soaking the back of his striped pajamas. Willing his frantic heart to still, Lockwood sighed, rubbing his eyes and running a hand through his sweat-slicked hair.

Third nightmare twice as many days. Fantastic.

Taking a deep breath, Lockwood forced himself to get up and stumble to the bathroom. After splashing water in his face, running another haggard hand through his hair, and staring at the equally haggard bags under his eyes, he decided that he probably wasn’t going to be getting back to sleep anytime soon, no matter how much his head was screaming to. His heart was still beating faster too.

Throwing on a new shirt and some of his more comfortable pants (AKA the ones that weren’t a size too small), Lockwood treaded quietly down the the library. The winter cold seeped through the floorboards of the old house and into his feet, but he didn’t seem to care. The falling snow was lazily illuminated by the pulsing ghost-lamp down the street.

He expected that when he got down there he’d switch on a lamp of his own, maybe try and start a fire in the fireplace, attempt to read a book but get distracted and gaze off into space for an hour or four until everyone else got up…

But to his surprise, Lucy had beat him to all of that.

“Lucy?” He asked, breaking her space-gazing trance and making her jump in her seat.

“Jesus, Lockwood. Don’t do that to me.” She breathed, putting a hand on her chest to still her heart. She was still wearing her pink and yellow nighty.

“Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting to see you down here… you can’t sleep either?”

Lucy sighed, shifting in her seat on the couch and looking vaguely uncomfortable, as if reminded of something she’d rather forget. “No. I didn’t want to.”

An unspoken understanding passed between them. They’d both been plagued by these nightmares since Penelop-- er, Marissa Fittes had paid them a visit last month shortly after they’d came back from the Other Side. It was the same dream, too. Same place, same emotions. Feelings of panic and fear.

Death.

The usual.

Both admitted that there was also an overwhelming loneliness to them too, like being there alone and without the other felt… wrong. Lucy had suggested it was because no one else knew what it felt like to be on the Other Side. At least, no one else alive.

“Mind if I join you?” Lockwood asked, stepping into the room.

“Sure.” Lucy shrugged, gesturing to a seat on the couch next to her and folding her legs up so that he had more room. Lockwood sat carefully, all of a sudden painfully aware of the distance he was respectfully keeping between them.

That was another side effect of the Other side he’d noticed. This weird bond. They’d had a bond before, obviously. That tends to happen when you get into life-or-death situations with a person every night of the week, not to mention live with them in the meantime, but this bond was different somehow. There was something supernatural about it that Lockwood couldn’t explain. Actually, he wasn’t sure if Lucy felt it at all. He hadn’t actually talked to her about it yet… he didn’t want to, only to find out it was one sided. That’d just lead to even bigger problems from him.

Whenever they were together, especially alone, it was like he felt this magnetism trying to pull him closer to her. Maybe it was just fear of losing her that triggered it, an urge to protect her. The same sort of thing as when he head that haunting rip in the Other Side, when he turned around to see Lucy had fallen out of her Spirit Cape. How he immediately ran back to scoop her up in his own cape… her frost crusted face and wide eyes, gasping for air as soon his arms were around her...

“Lockwood?”

She jolted him from his thoughts and he glanced down at her. “Hm?”

“Your feet are kind of cold...”

Quirking an eyebrow, Lockwood looked down at his feet he’d tucked up on the couch. They’d drifted as he thought and were now pressing into her thigh. Pulling them away like he’d touched a hot stove, he cleared his throat and casually rubbed his reddening face with his hand, using his chill fingers to will away the blood rushing to his cheeks.

“Sorry.” He mumbled. She tilted her head a degree out of the corner of his eye, then turned back to look into the fire. A few moments later Lockwood did the same, but his eyes seemed to wander and focus on Lucy more than the flames.

Her round cheeks and arms were pale except for the orange glow of the fire. She was wrapped around herself, presumably against the cold. Probably figured it was too much work to get a blanket… which made Lockwood smile and gave him either a great idea, or a terrible one.

“I’ll be right back.” He said suddenly, standing up, briskly leaving the room, and bounding up the stairs in twos. Lucy was left confused, and even more confused when he came back with the huge down comforter from his bed.

“Lockwood, there are blankets in here, you know.” She teased, lifting an eyebrow.

He chuckled awkwardly. “I know, I just… well, I was thinking…” Oh, don’t get cold feet now!

Lucy waited for him to continue, then prompted. “You were thinking…?”

Lockwood cleared his throat. “I was thinking… it might make us feel better to share it. Unless you don’t want to, of course. I can grab another blanket if you want it, I just thought that because of the Spirit Cape…” He mumbled and trailed off, uncharacteristically nervous. This idea was sounding worse and worse with every word that poured out of his mouth. Ooh, this was awkward. If he’d been a third party watching himself suffer like this, he would have turned away thirty seconds ago. He took a second to be thankful the skull wasn’t here to make faces at him.

For a few long, agonizing moments, Lucy only blinked at him, her eyes darting from his red-tinged cheeks to the navy blue and white checked blanket bundled up in his arms. Taking a shuffle step back, Lockwood started to mumble something like an apology, but she interrupted him.

“No, no. It’s okay. It’s just… you caught me off guard.”

“Oh… right. Sorry.”

He remained standing awkwardly in the doorway, a part of him wishing he’d never came down here and made an ass of himself.

“Well don’t just stand there.” Lucy said, smiling awkwardly and shifting in her seat to make room for him and his mountain of a blanket. “I’m cold.”

A grin stretched across his face. Lockwood came back to the couch and threw the blanket on around them, his arm draped over her shoulders underneath the goose feathers. Their body heat was instantly trapped inside with them, warming their toes.

A few awkward seconds of silence passed. “... I’m not pressing too close, am I?” Lockwood asked.

Lucy turned her head, a shy but amused smile playing on her lips. “No.”

“Alright… tell me if I am, okay?”

She turned to look back at the fire. “Okay.”

The pair sat for a long time. Lockwood was oddly stiff for most of it until Lucy shifted and snuggled closer, pulling the blanket (and by extension, his arm) around her more tightly. He took a second to thank whatever God was up there that their position didn’t allow her to see his face, because it had to be as red as a tomato.

As time passed, Lockwood relaxed significantly, taking the moment to try and let his responsibilities wash off of him. For the first time in a while, he was actually able to almost accomplish that. His arm was holding her close to him, her head resting on his chest. After a minute, Lockwood let his cheek rest on the top of her head, closing his eyes and sighing in bliss.

That tug he’d had on his heart, the bond they’d made in the Other Side, was sated. It was like the little creature in his chest had been trying to escape, but now that it found its mate it didn’t seem so eager to leave anymore. The anxious palpitation in his chest subsided, and drowsiness began to take over.

They sat like that for a long time. At some point, their fingers had intertwined and they’d both slumped over onto the armrest. Lucy was on top of him with Lockwood’s arms around her, and I don’t think either of them would disagree that it was the best sleep they’d had in a month.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave constructive criticism if you have it! I really want to be an actually decent writer so anything you can think of would be awesome <3
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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